Consumer products may be assembled using multiple parts. Some of these parts may be plated (e.g., using electroplating or similar techniques) with one or more layers of metal. During manufacturing, a thickness of each of the metal layers may be determined for quality control purposes. For example, if a metal layer is too thin, the coated part may lack sufficient structural rigidity and may crack under normal use. If the metal layer is too thick, the coating may prevent the coated part from fitting properly with the other parts when the product is being assembled, making the product difficult to assemble or causing the product to fall apart after assembly due to ill-fitting parts.
Current non-destructive thickness measurement techniques, such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, may be suitable for accurately measuring thin layers, but may be incapable of accurately measuring metal layers that are thicker than a particular thickness. For example, XRF may be capable of measuring thicknesses up to 15 microns but may be incapable of measure thicknesses of 20 microns or more. In addition, current techniques may be capable of measuring the thickness of a single metal layer but incapable of determining the thickness of individual layers of multiple metal layers. Furthermore, techniques such as XRF may be relatively slow and therefore unsuited for mass produced components of a consumer product, such as a computing device.